quote:

Originally posted by John Doe In 99% of all posts pepole complain about their problems with certain gear. All those who don't have problems don't post anything at all.

This is the important point, and it's why it's important not to make hasty generalizations based on a few reviews.

Every product has a certain defect rate - that's just reality. You hope that these things get weeded out by QC but design and manufacturing is not so simple. Thus, there's always a certain percentage of people who will be posting bad reviews of a product (I don't think I've ever seen any product on any site with more than 10 reviews and none of them bad).

The wildly popular products like the MOTU 828 (and to a lesser extent, the Ultralite) are therefore going to get many negative reviews, in the absolute sense, just due to statistics. It's entirely possible that some early MOTU products had defective Firewire interfaces that still worked OK when connected to certain Texas Instruments interfaces. I watch this same phenomenon happen in software every day; things that are buggy and by all rights should not work properly do work properly under a certain set of conditions. That's called a fluke.

Everybody who works in the hardware/software design+build industry hates these problems, not just for the obvious reason that they're impossible to debug, but also because they breed superstition in the end users. It's random reinforcement - sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't - and due to purely random chance, different people will find that it has statistically worked more often under specific circumstances. There's no causation, no logical reason, but it's like astrology, if someone is so inclined then they can easily count the hits and ignore the misses. And they do; people are very well-adapted to this kind of thinking because it's necessary in other areas (if you can't ignore the noise, you're schizophrenic).

RME and Echo products aren't as popular as MOTU. RME for the obvious reason that they're expensive as hell, and Echo I'm not so sure (maybe their marketing isn't as good). Thus, even if you see the same percentage of bad reviews (and you usually do, in spite of the fact that buyers who pay more often go to greater lengths to justify their purchases), you tend to see less of them overall. The human brain isn't good at putting this into statistical terms, it notices absolutes (way more problems with MOTU than with RME!) and extrapolates from this while ignoring key details (way fewer RME units out there than MOTU!).

It's important to take every review and testimonial with a grain of salt, or maybe a few pounds of it. You have to look for broad statistical trends; even if you've seen 20 or 30 reviews that all claimed MOTU had bad drivers, you have to remember that the reference point is 20 or 30 thousand people (probably more) who have bought the product and had no problems with it.

___________________
My party schedule:
2009-02-21 - DJ Attention @ I'm So Popular
2009-06-18 - DJ Annoying @ People Need To Know Where I'll Be
2012-11-32 - DJ Insufferable ɸ Or At Least the Stalkers I Complain About
2048-06-66 - Spastic & Whocares ¶ Although I'm Actually Flattered
9999-45-81 - Tweaker Gimp ☼ I Probably Won't Even Go To This But I Have To Make Sure I Fill Up All The Available Space Here

If you can't listen to user reviews, what CAN you listen to?

I understand that only people who are highly oppinionated will speak out, and you have to take it in context of the units sold (I did business stats @ uni... lol), but you don't really have much else to go on. User / magazine reviews are the closest alternative to trying the product yourself. I don't know of many shops down here that would let me do that, so it would have to be the same in the states.

If you look at good reviews in PROPORTION to bad reviews, you would get a fairly accurate idea anyway. I read more bad reviews vs. good reviews for MOTU than I have for Echo. The one variable is that MOTU might not be impressive enough for people to be "highly oppinionated" enough to post a good review. Hence changing the balance.

Everything anyone has said in here is just talk, be it from personal experience, or the experience of others. Whats the difference? None. But, it's all we can do.

I think I should stay out of product debates, I'm too "highly oppinionated"

I didn't say that you shouldn't listen to customer reviews, I said you should look for patterns instead of basing anything on a single review or handful of them.

It's also wrong to be comparing the number of good reviews to the number of bad reviews, since reviews are - in general - self-selecting in the "bad" area. You should be comparing the number of bad reviews to the volume of sales, and if you happen to spot a number of glowing reviews (rarely happens) then that might be an additional factor.

___________________
My party schedule:
2009-02-21 - DJ Attention @ I'm So Popular
2009-06-18 - DJ Annoying @ People Need To Know Where I'll Be
2012-11-32 - DJ Insufferable ɸ Or At Least the Stalkers I Complain About
2048-06-66 - Spastic & Whocares ¶ Although I'm Actually Flattered
9999-45-81 - Tweaker Gimp ☼ I Probably Won't Even Go To This But I Have To Make Sure I Fill Up All The Available Space Here

I don't have MOTU sales data on hand, so I can't really say, haha.

These arguments are a bit irrelevant. I agree it's probably not correct to recommend (or push aside) a product based upon reputation. However, reputation, be it good or bad, is all you have to go on. It's the very reason half the people on here happily go out and buy all their gear on ebay without even seeing it in real life first.

The MOTU clan seems to have taken my comments badly, which is pretty understandable, I would have too if I spent $1,000 on one.
I never said MOTU are bad products, I just said they have had a bad REPUTATION for drivers in the past. Which they have. Don't shoot the messenger! Obviously in the nature of drivers, that is an issue for some and not others. SO, all you MOTU owners can relax! We all know they're right up there in terms of build/component quality lol...

Those E-MUs are another case though... I pretty much just said they are straight up crap.
Wrong? Yes.
I'm happy to stand by that and take a beating though.

E-MUs *are* crap for drivers, I struggled with one for over a year before finally breaking down and buying the (much more expensive) MOTU unit. Every couple of reboots the thing would just die, and it would take no less than three complete driver uninstalls/reinstalls to get it working again (until the next reboot). The nail in the coffin was when I had to replace a defective hard drive and found out in the most unpleasant way possible that Emulator X uses C-DILLA; it absolutely refused to re-authorize itself, and their support was unable to provide any working solution.

The older E-MU hardware samplers are still the best, but the "Creative Professional" software department is a bunch of clowns.

On a side note, I'd be saying the same thing about MOTU whether I owned one or not - in fact I did, long before I ever bought it.

___________________
My party schedule:
2009-02-21 - DJ Attention @ I'm So Popular
2009-06-18 - DJ Annoying @ People Need To Know Where I'll Be
2012-11-32 - DJ Insufferable ɸ Or At Least the Stalkers I Complain About
2048-06-66 - Spastic & Whocares ¶ Although I'm Actually Flattered
9999-45-81 - Tweaker Gimp ☼ I Probably Won't Even Go To This But I Have To Make Sure I Fill Up All The Available Space Here

Digunut - you're absolutely right about not beleiving reviews, for the very reasons you stated (units vs problems especially).

I hate the majority of reviews becasue once you have worked with or used various audio equipment, you really see how much bullshit is printed about most kit.

I don't know where this opinion of "bad reputation" for MOTU has come from?

I have been in a fairly unique position of giving tech suppport for a huge range of audio equipment, the majority of enquiries DAW based and therefore soundcards.

My professional epxerience based on more than two and half years on installing, repairing, troubleshooting, day in day out, is that MOTU was the least grief, hardly ever came back faulty, were built to a manufacturing QC beyond nearly all other brands, had solid reliable drivers which hardly ever had conflicts and most of all sound incredible. We sold shitloads (i mean probably in excess of 500 per month) of motu products a month and can honestly say we got about 5 - 10 units back a month, and most of thoses issues turned out to be user error.

The only thing that sucks with MOTU units is they cost a lot, but then you get what you pay for?